Things of the Aimless Wanderer

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A truly unconventional cinematic experience, Things of the Aimless Wanderer, Kivu Ruhorahoza’s second feature after 2011’s Grey Matter, confirms the strength of the Rwandan filmmaker’s brilliantly distinctive directorial voice. A merciless dissection of the relationship between masculinity and territoriality, the film sees the conditions of the colony and the post-colony along a common trajectory of exploitation and violence, in which no critique is unduly spared. The division between past and present melts into a menacing, timelessness of abuse along axes of race and gender, seeing the two as intertwined in the most intimate of ways. A triptych that poses three hypotheses around the disappearance of a young, black woman, the film implicates without determination both the colonial interloper (the “aimless wanderer”) and Rwandan agent of a mysterious internal organisation. Composed of mesmerising imagery and soundscapes that are both immaculately cinematic and hauntingly enigmatic, the allusions of this brave and challenging film lay the foundation for rich and important conversations about the soul of the African continent.